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Saturday, September 29, 2012

The New Jim Crow: Michelle Alexander to speak in Houston

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of color-blindness, will appear next week at a speaking engagement in H-Town sponsored by Progressive Forum Houston and the ACLU of Texas. I've mentioned before that Grits doesn't necessarily buy into the book's thesis, but there's little doubt it has brought significant attention to issues of mass incarceration, focusing on criticisms from the opposite end of the political spectrum from say, the Right on Crime crowd.

One of the reasons for optimism that the nation could be on the brink of ending, or at least reevaluating, the era of mass incarceration in which we find ourselves is that vastly differing criticisms of the system have arisen from across the political spectrum, from traditional conservatives to unabashed liberals to Ron Paul libertarians. Thinking people have announced their dislike for overincarceration from virtually every spot on the political spectrum, with most of the public support tending to come from folks with a financial stake in its continuance - police unions, prosecutors, prison officials, private prison companies, and the array of contractors which have sprung up to service prisons and law enforcement. Further, the influence of the latter group has been constrained by harsh budget realities in which funding for mass incarceration must compete with more popular education and health care priorities. Today, even politicians who built their careers promoting mass incarceration are beginning to moderate their lock-em-up proclivities.

I may not agree with Alexander's overall thesis about Jim Crow - I think that argument ignores the fact that black folks are disproportionately victims of crime, and also trivializes the vast differences between the liberty and opportunities afforded black people today compared to the era of American apartheid - but many of her arguments in the book are spot on, and she's made a valuable contribution to the national conversation on the subject. If you're in Houston (regrettably, I can't be), you may want to attend the event and hear what she has to say.

12 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I tend to think that in the Obama economy, it's just a matter of time before crime rates begin to creep back up. When they do, most conservatives, at least, will remember why some people still need to be incarcerated. I would venture to guess that there's more than enough waste in education and health care funding that, if redirected, could sustain our prisons for decades.

By the way, this lady (and anyone who buys her BS) is the perfect example of waste in our educational funding that I mentioned above. I wonder if she really believes that Jim Crow crap or if she's just a practitioner of the P. T. Barnum marketing approach.

9:08, anyone who says "in the Obama economy, it's just a matter of time before crime rates begin to creep back up" can't accuse anyone else of a "PT Barnum marketing approach" - you're the huckster here!

And 1:06, what crimes do you think Ms. Alexander committed, besides truthtelling?

The problem do not have as much to do with color as it class. The poor, under educated and mentally ill are most the ones in prison. If more was spent on them when they are 6 years old they wouldn't have to spend so much when they are 20. Educate children when they are young and have jobs for them when old and they won't be in prison. How many are in prison beca54use the only way they know how to make a dollar is to sell drugs on the corner or steal it.

You're the joke, 9:45. South Africa is barely a generation out from having ended apartheid. The American south is two generations out. Do you think racism vanishes overnight just because the laws change?

Unlike the commentators on here, I both read the book and heard her speak...

The evidence shows that blacks and whites use and sell drugs at roughly similar rates -- but that blacks are 13 times as likely to be incarcerated for their drug use.

Anyone who thinks that black incarceration rates are so high because blacks are more likely to commit crimes than whites has just been drinking the neocon kool-aid. Our current incarceration rates, that have QUINTUPLED over the last thirty years, are the result of the GOP's Southern Strategy, that has sought to paint all minorities as the dangerous "other" that "we" need to control and incarcerate.

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